


hell is a garden

by kathikon



Series: gen kill star wars au [2]
Category: Generation Kill, Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Prequel Trilogy, Star Wars: The Clone Wars (2008) - All Media Types
Genre: (It's Not Graphic and They Dont Have Names), Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - Star Wars Fusion, Child Murder, Explicit Language, Force Ghost Ray Person, Force Visions, Force-Related Visions, Gen, Holocron, Imperial Era (Star Wars), Jealousy, Jedi, Mandalorian character, Mando'a, Nightmares, Non-Graphic Violence, Out of Character, Post-Order 66, Post-Star Wars: The Clone Wars, Sith Inquisitor James Trombley, Tags Contain Spoilers, The Dark Side of the Force, The Force, Weird dreams, implied past relationship, no beta we die like men
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-05-04
Updated: 2020-05-04
Packaged: 2021-03-02 22:35:29
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 4,033
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24014548
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/kathikon/pseuds/kathikon
Summary: I'm still alive, but you are dead. I remember you, so you are eternal.He is reborn from the earth, clawing his way out of the mud.In this strange new world, he was both revered and reviled, feared and pitied at once, the remnants of a bygone age where shining knights kept the peace in the galaxy. The time for those childish dreams was long over.
Relationships: Minor or Background Relationship(s), Ray Person & James Trombley
Series: gen kill star wars au [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1727335
Comments: 2
Kudos: 5





	1. i - apprentice

**Author's Note:**

> work title from "have heart" - songs to scream at the sun  
> this is the characters of james trombley, ray person, and brad colbert as portrayed in the hbo miniseries generation kill. this does not reflect the real marines, and no implications/disrespect towards or about any real persons are intended. this is just for my own enjoyment and fun!
> 
> set 7 years after the events of “stars in the sky don’t mean nothing”

From the mud he was born again, the son of Concordia, into a world where he was no longer needed, no longer wanted. 

In this strange new world, he was both revered and reviled, feared and pitied at once, the remnants of a bygone age where shining knights kept the peace in the galaxy. The time for those childish dreams was long over.

He had lost everything, and he knew this- he felt the echoes of the suffering through the force, the pain and grief and death were too much for one alone to bear. The child reached out into the Force, clinging to the remnants of his Master’s presence in this world, but it was faded, and he knew the man was long gone from this planet. If he was alive, the boy did not know, but he felt fear and rage and grief and longing and death in traces that lingered.

On this world, the stench of death mixed with the darkness that festered here. He could smell the acrid stench of burnt flesh in the air, soaking into the mud with the rain.   
He relived the last moments of the Jedi that died before him, unable to look away even though he wanted to, like a starship crashing.   
Despite everything, as he watched what he could not change, he felt nothing but sorrow, with hatred and resentment bubbling under it. His Master would not have grieved for him as he had for the other.

The echoes of his past told him that this is wrong, as he felt the emotions twisted and writhed inside him like serpents, a roiling storm, but he could not seem to care about what he had been taught anymore.

His own mourning was earthshaking. The planet cried fire and death with him. This was not the Jedi way, he knew , but he had felt it- the Jedi were no more, and he would have to change as the balance of the galaxy had, or he would die, just like the others. Even as he thought this, he did nothing to stop the earth from swallowing up those in its path, a gaping red maw like a vicious animal.   
It was the first thing that burned red, searing itself into his memory.   
It would not be the last.   
Coruscant had changed since the last time he’d been there, and corpses burned in the courtyard of the old Temple.

The Padawan, once dead and now reborn, turned away from the sight, away from the remains of the past.    
The first hunter had died by his hand, crushed by bushels of spice brought down onto her head in the dark underbelly of the Core World. He’d watched her beg for him to help her, pinned under the container, slowly suffocating, and he’d taken her lightsaber and left her to die, walking away to the sound of her fruitless wails.

Days later, another had come, and yet, he came bearing an offer. Join them.

The Padawan thought one more time about his grieving on Dellalt.

There was no place for heroes in this new world. 

He nodded. 

James Trombley did not die in the mud on Dellalt, but instead on Coruscant, shedding his past like serpent sheds its skin, and in his place, something much darker grew, another head on the beast that was the Empire, another cog in the endless wheel of destruction and war.

One day, he thought, his Master would see the truth of the world, all the wretched evils that ruled life. Man was inherently evil.

There would be time for vengeance later.   



	2. ii - imperator

Seven years.

It’d been seven years since he’d dragged himself out of the wreckage, reborn in the death of the galaxy he’d grown up in.

The Second Brother was not a man to be trifled with- there was a reason he’d risen so high in the Inquisitorius, and it wasn’t because he was a dick-sucking brown noser who licked the Grand Inquisitor’s boots.

It was because he was stronger than the rest of them.

He’d been only a padawan when the Jedi had fallen, but time had made him an adept predator. The competition within the Inquisition had been brutal, and yet he had risen to the top, because the dark side fed on his bitterness, the resentment and rage that had festered in him, and it made him powerful.

The man before him had died with dignity. The Second Brother could not say the same about most others he had killed.

Jedi Master Reyes had acknowledged that the time had come, and the flicker of sadness and the disgusting  _ pity _ in his gaze had infuriated the young Inquisitor. And yet, it stayed his hand, ever so slightly, and he’d killed the man with a simple decapitation-  _ sai cha.  _ _  
_ _ This is mercy _ , he thought, breathing in the stench of burnt flesh.  _ This is more than you deserve. _

And yet, all he felt, staring down at the body, was a deep-seated emptiness.

He’d known the Consular in his youth, Reyes had been a friend of his old master, beforelife had become nothing more than an endless hunt, the Jedi scurrying like mice away from the power of the Galactic Empire.

The Second Brother turned away from the body, turning towards the man’s padawans, cowering against the wall, and he did not show that same mercy.

Perhaps it was because the boys reminded the Inquisitor of himself all those years ago, his own fear at the loss of his Master, but the thought was fleeting, pushing all of those feelings back down as he stepped out of the ruined temple and into the late afternoon sunshine.   
Ashas Ree was a miserable place, one of those awful little outer rim planets like Dellalt. As he strode through the tall grass, his head spun with memories, dizzying in their intensity, the mud and rain and suffering, the stench of bodies and fear.

As he stopped in front of his ship, he paused, looking at his mirrored shape in the shiny dark gleam of the starship’s hull.

The Second Brother considered, frozen for a moment, then pulled his helmet off, staring at himself. 

He lacked the vanity of some of the others, and hadn't looked closely at himself in years, not since his days before the Inquisitorius.   
It was strange- he hardly recognised the man staring back at himself. He’d never thought about it much, that he’d grown in the years since the Order fell, that he was no longer the child he’d remembered himself as, but his hair had grown into wild curls, and his face was marred with scars. He looked sunken and withered away, barely a living creature, a waif of a thing. The most startling was his eyes, sulfur-yellow, glowing like coins, an animal staring back.   
Trailing his metal hand across the largest of the scars, there was an odd pang of loss. How would Ray have seen him, if they met now? A monster? 

A surge of fury flooded him, and he brought his fist up, punching the metal hard enough to distort his reflection, though those yellow eyes still stared back, breath coming out in ragged pants.   
Ray was long dead, both him and that scar were a reminder of his Master’s abandonment, of the failure of the Jedi Order to even hold onto its own beliefs. As a Jedi, they’d been trained to be keepers of the peace, not soldiers. And yet, all he’d been since he was a padawan, was a _ soldier _ . He’d once maintained the foolish belief that the war had been justified, that once the Separatists were under the Republic’s control the galaxy would be- finally- at peace. _  
_ He was  _ not _ that child anymore.

He had erased every remnant of who he’d been, the naive boy who’d followed every single order he’d been issued, and rewarded for his obedience with nothing but the blaster to his head.    
The Republic failed everyone. The Jedi had failed everyone. And for years, the idealistic child within him had held onto the belief that it was the manipulation of the dark side. But he’d long since realised that it was inevitable, the time for Peace would have come to an end one way or another.

_ You are not a tool of the Jedi- you are not what they wanted you to become. _

The Jedi had wanted a soldier, and they had one now. _  
_ The Second Brother took a deep, wavering breath, before he slid his helmet back on, the mechanism locking back into place. He’d gotten what he’d come to Ashas Ree for, the starmap to the one person he’d been looking for, all these years.

In his hand the kyber crystal was warm still, an almost pulsating heat through the glove.   
It had a life of its own, nearly, like he was holding a tiny creature whose frantic heart beat against his fingers. It held so much, and yet nothing at all, just a fragment of the knowledge that had once been held in the Archives of the Jedi Temple.

Soon, he’d know where the man was, and he’d put an end to the past. The Jedi would die by his hand- that much he knew. He was finally on the right track, he could feel it, and there was a sick joy in it, knowing that each minute he was closer to killing the man he’d spent years both idolising and resenting. Hunting down the source of his sorrow, of all the pain he’d been through, was the cumulation, the magnum opus of everything he’d done, everything he’d fought for, what kept him going, kept him fighting day after day.

The old Master was going to die, the Second Brother would see to that. He didn’t care about anything else anymore, everything beyond the desire to see him suffer was dead and gone anyways.   
He was going to make Brad Colbert feel the same way he did before he died. 

Before that though, he had one more stop to make.   
Senator Fick would be surprised to see him- he was assured of this.


	3. iii - hunter

Corellia was beautiful.   
Coming out of the indescribable kaleidoscope of hyperspace, the planet was a swirling mass of blue and green, like a marble drifting in the glittering darkness that was the Galactic Core. As much as he hated to admit it, it brought him back to his long-ago childhood, before the Clone Wars.   
Entering the atmosphere was another wave of painful nostalgia, images dancing behind his eyelids as his droids took control of the ship. He pushed the images from his mind, ignoring the pang of longing in favour of focusing on the task at hand.

His actions would have consequences, he was certain, since the man was still a prominent member of the Imperial Senate, but sacrifices had to be made for the good of the Empire. The Second Brother was sure that Lord Vader, at least, would understand.

Despite all the planet’s beauty, seeing Kor Vella from the viewport of his ship just made him want to raze the city to the ground and torch the picturesque fields until there was nothing but ashes.

It was too much for him, as he stepped out onto the picturesque mesas and fields that made up the city, the historical homes that dotted the gold and brown landscape brilliant white. As the wind whistled past, the Inquisitor found himself simply staring out into the early morning haze, the blanket of mist that drifted between the towers of stone as though they were so far above the world that he could look down on the clouds. A small smile spread across his face, hidden behind his mask.

What a lovely morning this was turning out to be, and he was certain it would do nothing but get better.

Turning away from the scenic landscape, the Inquisitor turned his focus to the estate that was before him.

Senator Fick had changed the appearance of his home since he’d last been here, all those years ago, the Inquisitor noted absently, as he tore the door off its hinges, tossing it away with the force.

The guard, a Devonarian, scrambled for his blaster, eyes wide with surprise.

“Hey! You can’t be here, what are you-“ He cut the man off, lifting him into the air by his neck, watching him gasp and writhe.

Soon, the man’s struggles slowed, then stopped, and the Second Brother let the body fall to the floor, stepping over it as he continued onwards.

Looking around, it almost seemed as though nobody had truly lived here for a long time, the impeccable condition of the home only upset by the fine layer of dust that covered everything, white sheets draped over the elegant furniture and many of paintings that decorated the wall.

Memories flooded back in pieces, hot breath on his skin, a summer before the Battle on Geonosis, a newly minted Padawan, laying in bed, fingers trailing over soft lips. Years later, a wink and a well kept secret, a clever mouth, and a promise to keep this close whispered against slick skin, damp with sweat.

He leaned over, all but tearing his helmet off to vomit on the floor, reeling with the dizzying intensity of the emotions. He didn’t look up at the sound of footsteps, using the force to slam the woman into the walls until he heard her stop screaming, when he was sure there was no more bones for her to break. 

This place was haunted by the ghost of his past, and all he could feel was the lingering pain that filled these halls.

He wiped his mouth, putting his helmet back on. As he ascended the staircase, he came to face it. One of the few uncovered paintings, a great monstrosity that mocked him with the love that practically oozed from it. The Senator was younger here, a soft smile on his lips, and for a moment, the Inquisition understood why the Jedi had loved him. At his side stood a much more familiar figure, the man he hunted. Brad Colbert smiled for Nate Fick, when he so rarely had during the war, blissfully ignorant of the coming years bringing everything crashing down about them.

An ugly snarl warped his face as he reached up, digging his fingers into the canvas until it tore, clawing at the piece with both hands and pulling away strips of it, baring the backing, ugly wooden ribs exposed to the world, as though a disemboweled animal, its guts spilling onto the dusty floor.

He drew in gasping breaths, shoulders heaving with the impossible effort to push back the memories that circled at the edge of his mind like a hungry predator.

He had to find Fick.

Everything depended on this, he thought over the haze of white noise slowly filling his head. The Senator was the last piece of the puzzle.

It was all that mattered.

As he staggered through the door of the Senator’s study, lightsaber throwing sharp shadows against the red glow, he had expected to find Fick, perhaps reading, or whatever the man did outside of the mockery of democracy that made up the Imperial senate. Instead, he was greeted by only the blue glow of a holovid playing from the terminal set into the large desk before him.

“ _ This isn't a farewell, Nate. This is a thank you.” _

He cut it off before he had to hear any more of his old Master’s voice, slumping down into the large chair behind the desk, resting his head against the wood. 

Fick was long gone. He could feel it, his presence here was nothing more than a whisper, a barely-there tug in his gut.

The Inquisitor pulled his helmet off, setting it on the desk, re-opening the holoterminal. There had to be something here, where the man was- why he wasn’t home. Scanning through the endless files, opening one holovid after another, he found himself drifting into an exhausted monotony, years of security footage, the Jedi talking to the Senator, a billion meaningless nothings.

Their love sickened him, the breathless little  _ “I can’t wait to see you again” _ s and  _ “I miss you” _ s that made him dizzy with jealousy and guilt.

Stumbling across the file had been an accident, scanning through anything that would give him a clue to where the Jedi Master had gone. He was greeted with old security footage, barely a few months into the War, of himself, laying on some bed, sick from eating too many pastries despite Brad’s warnings, Ray’s mockery. He remembered this- the soft blue walls, how Ray’s hair had ticked the side of his neck as they laid there, staring up at the ceiling, the way his skin had been nearly burning at the points they touched, how the warmth had lingered for days afterward. The holovid had no sound, but he found himself whispering along, unable to look away. 

_ “Do you think I’m a failure?” _

_ “A fucked up little pyscho, yes- but a failure? Homes, have you _ seen _ yourself? You can do shit with the Force that I know Brad didn’t teach you- or I’d be able to do it. You’re a stone-cold, dead-eyed killer, homes. I’m only a Jedi Knight because I didn’t  _ die _ on that kriffing bug-infested hellhole. Not because I’m a good Jedi or something colossally stupid like that. Why do you think the council keeps having me hang around with Brad and your nerf-herding ass?” _

_ Ray’d been silent for a moment, thinking. _

_ “Gar cuyir luubid,” he’d finally said in stilting, accented Mando’a, which had made James laugh until his stomach ache came back, before just laying there, gasping for air. _

_ “Vor’e,” James whispered back, like it was a secret, between the two of them, “ibac cuyir an kebise at ni, vod.” _

_ “Trombley, I hate to tell you this, but I have no fucking clue what you just said. Speak fucking Basic, you animal.” _

There’d been more to it, but the sheer rawness of the bitter feeling in his chest startled him back to reality. This was a lost cause, if there’d been anything here, the Senator had wiped it before he’d left.

He got back to his feet, pulling that helmet back on. 

Enough of his time had been wasted on Corellia, he needed to get the information on Reyes’ Kyber crystal. As the Second Brother strode across the field, he shoved the rest of the memories back down, mouth pulled into a taut line. There was no use in dwelling on the past, not now.

Drawing away from the planet and into space, he leaned back in his seat and closed his eyes, sinking down into a restless sleep.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> some translations for the mando'a used in this chapter!  
> \- "gar cuyir luubid", you are enough  
> \- "vor'e", thanks  
> \- "ibac cuyir an kebise at ni, vod", it means a lot from you, brother, literally "you are all things to me, brother"


	4. iv - dreamer

He was standing in the courtyard of the Jedi Temple.   
Chimes rang in the background, the sunshine pouring down, warming him down to his bones.   
“The temple is beautiful, isn’t it?”   
Every muscle in his body froze up as a hand touched his shoulder, so hot it nearly branded his skin, and he shuddered, turning to face the truth.   
Before him stood everything he’d lost, long dead and in the ground, and he knew now that it was a dream. Ray’s hand moved to curl around the nape of the Second Brother’s neck, and he could feel the pinpricks of hot tears in his eyes, stinging.    
“As it was before the war,” he whispered, turning his head into the touch, eyes sliding closed, just reveling in the contact.   
“There is no war here.”   
He opened his eyes again, and the Jedi’s face was twisted, swarming with maggots, eyes shining like coins. The sky had gone dark, storm clouds rolling like a restless sea through the sky.   
“There is no war here,” the thing repeated, as he stared, horrified at the thing that stood before him. He could feel something squirming along the side of his face and neck, but he didn’t dare to look.  
_ Wake up. Wake up. _   
“Are you scared,  _ vod _ ?” He shut his eyes tightly, trying to get his breathing back in check, hands curled into fists. “You wanted this,” it whispered, breath hot as it leaned in, “didn’t you?” It was hardly more than a rasping whisper, low and harsh in his ears.   
_ “Please don’t do this again,” _ the Inquisitor whispered, cringing away from the touch.   
  


He jolted awake, chest heaving as he shot up out of the pilot’s seat like a bat from hell.   
There was too much going through his head. Sleep would have to wait- he shuffled out of the cockpit of his ship, slumping down into the empty communal area, drawing both the Kyber crystal and a small Holocron from his pocket. He slumped down into a new place, relaxing against the cold metal, tipping his head back to stare at the ceiling.   
The Second Brother slid his hands over his face, pushing the nightmare back from his immediate consciousness. Seeing Ray, if even for only a brief moment, had been nice, a sort of reprieve from his mission.

_ You should have died on that wretched mudball with him, hut’uun. _

Guilt seemed to be a staple in his days recently, a desire to have expressed everything he buried so deep he could barely remember what it felt like.   
He could feel the device opening, the soft hum of the force flowing through the air, surrounding him with a gentle pressure, a blanket wrapped tightly around him.   
_ Elphrona, _ the Holocron whispers, _ your master is on Elphrona. _

The voices within the force were changing, familiar.   
_ holds all that which you seek. _

“You’ve done a lot of fucked up shit, Trombley, but this really takes the cake. I mean, you always were like a little onion of retardation, each time I pulled off a layer of your emotionally-constipated bullshit, it's like there’s more sheer stupidity just stuffed in there like the worst set of Pantoran nesting dolls in existence.”   
He didn’t open his eyes, digging his hands in his thighs tightly, trying to ignore the voice clawing itself into his ears.   
“Did you think that the Empire will really truly erase the Jedi from the galaxy? In the opinion of this Jedi Knight, the whole Clone Wars was a big clusterfuck organised by the Emperor so he could seize power. Dooku meant nothing. The Purge meant nothing.”   
His heartbeat pounded in his ears, as the Holocron snapped shut, the pulsing warmth of the Force disappearing from the air as the device clattered to the ground.   
“You’re not real, Ray” he said sharply, voice thin and tense. “Just leave me alone,  _ please _ .” There was no reprieve from his nightmares. It seemed, awake or not, the ghosts of his past found him wherever he went.   
“No matter what you find on Elphrona, it will change nothing. The Empire’s gonna get its ass kicked by some fucked up hick from the shittiest backwoods planet you can think of. Killing Brad won’t satisfy you, don’t you understand? You were always more helmet than head, so I guess I shouldn’t expect you to.”   
Finally opening his eyes, he stared at the figure in front of him, eyes fixed on the translucent blue figure.   
“Go away.”

“Oh, you don’t mean that, do you?” Ray crossed his arms over his chest, a wicked smile on his lips as he raised his eyebrows. There was a deep-rooted  _ wrongness _ to it, the way the Inquisitor’s heart skipped a beat, stomach fluttering at the smile, when he knew full well that this had to be some figment of his imagination.   
“You aren’t fucking real,  _ go away _ ,” he repeated, nearly begging now, getting to his feet and turning back to the cockpit.  _ Elphora,  _ he repeated in his mind, over and over, like a mantra, trying to ignore Ray’s words.   
“Let the past die, James.”   
_ Then I’ll kill it. _

He turned, lashing out furiously with his red-bladed lightsaber in a wild stoke, teeth bared.   
Nothing. Whatever it was long gone, and he was alone, once again.

The Inquisitor exhaled softly, as he ran his hands through his hair before turning away, swallowed his pride and the feelings in his throat, setting a course to Elphrona.   


**Notes for the Chapter:**

> more mando'a translations :)  
> \- "vod", brother/friend  
> \- "hut'uun", coward
> 
> as you can tell i really liked yoda's journey arc oof

**Author's Note:**

> Happy Star Wars Day! May the force be with you!! <3


End file.
